Sense 1factor -- (anything that contributes causally to a result; "a number of factors determined the outcome") => cause -- (events that provide the generative force that is the origin of something; "they are trying to determine the cause of the crash")

Sense 2component, constituent, element, factor, ingredient -- (an abstract part of something; "jealousy was a component of his character"; "two constituents of a musical composition are melody and harmony"; "the grammatical elements of a sentence"; "a key factor in her success"; "humor: an effective ingredient of a speech") => part, section, division -- (one of the portions into which something is regarded as divided and which together constitute a whole; "the written part of the exam"; "the finance section of the company"; "the BBC's engineering division")

Sense 3divisor, factor -- (one of two or more integers that can be exactly divided into another integer; "what are the 4 factors of 6?") => integer, whole number -- (any of the natural numbers (positive or negative) or zero; "an integer is a number that is not a fraction")

Sense 4agent, factor, broker -- (a businessman who buys or sells for another in exchange for a commission) => businessperson, bourgeois -- (a capitalist who engages in industrial commercial enterprise)

Sense 5factor -- (any of the numbers (or symbols) that form a product when multiplied together) => number -- (a concept of quantity involving zero and units; "every number has a unique position in the sequence")

Sense 7gene, cistron, factor -- ((genetics) a segment of DNA that is involved in producing a polypeptide chain; it can include regions preceding and following the coding DNA as well as introns between the exons; it is considered a unit of heredity; "genes were formerly called factors") => sequence -- (serial arrangement in which things follow in logical order or a recurrent pattern; "the sequence of names was alphabetical"; "he invented a technique to determine the sequence of base pairs in DNA")